The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, is now defending moves to extradite him to Britain and claiming Moroccan nationality through his father.

Police believe the suspect, one of Britain's top cage fighters, may have been forced to postpone his alleged plans for the robbery by several months after he was the victim of a stabbing through the heart outside a nightclub.

Although he lost 30 pints of blood surgeons were able to staple his punctured lung and repair the heart wound.

The father-of-three and his alleged lieutenant in the heist, a fellow cagefighter who cannot be named, are alleged to have driven to Dover, Holland and then travelled to Morocco in the days after the raid.

They arrived in Rabat with two associates, police believe.

They were allegedly seen in the nightclub of the city's finest hotel, La Tour Hassan, mingling with well-heeled young Moroccans as they came out to dance at midnight, while taxi drivers were tipped handsomely.

Basing themselves in a rented villa in the upmarket Souissi district, near homes owned by members of the Saudi and Emirates royal families, the friends would take trips along the coast to Casablanca or inland to Marrakech, spending time in lavish hotels and at gaming tables.

The men also shopped extensively and drove around in a gold Mercedes.

The cage fighter had decided to buy and renovate a luxury villa for around £700,000, complete with bronze statues, marble floors, ornate staircases and a gym and sauna in the basement.

The centrepiece was to be a lifesize mural of the cage fighter winning one a high-profile bout in Las Vegas, overlooking a whirlpool bath. There would also be rooms for his two children and two parents.